Just about every small-town newspaper in America is running some lousy gee-whiz story about how you can't find a Wii. These stories are so utterly bland and identical in their lousiness that there was a brief brouhaha when one gaming site became convinced Nintendo had to be planting them in the media, and Nintendo was pretty upset at the allegation. (I just assumed the stories were bland and identical because most small-town newspaper reporting is pretty awful.)
Chris Kohler is about as far from lousy as you get when it comes to writing about games, so he did some actual legwork in this excellent Wired feature article about the Great Wii Shortage of 2007. It's all an excellent read, but here are some bullet-point quotes to whet your appetite.
- "I've never seen anything like this," says Michael Pachter, a videogame industry analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities, about the overwhelming demand for Wiis. "Nintendo could not have expected this level of popularity."
- Demand for Wii is so high, says analyst Pachter, because of all the different types of consumers competing for the units.
- But it's not just kids who crave Wii. Grown-ups also want to get their hands on the console, which uses a motion-sensing controller to make gameplay much more realistic than standard joysticks, so they can play Wii's tennis and bowling games. (The latter is an especially big hit at retirement homes.)
